Holiday Memories

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Rocco Staino -- School Library Journal, 1/8/2008 2:10:00 PM

Here’s Part II of our annual series, presenting holiday stories from some of your favorite children’s authors and illustrators.

Susan Jeffers

We had an amateur theater in the small town where I grew up, in New Jersey. It was a big part of town life, and both my parents participated in the productions. About the time I was 10 years old, the children’s part of the group decided to put on A Christmas Carol as their holiday piece. I had a small part as one of the char women. I vividly remember my father coaching me over and over to say my lines with a heavy Cockney accent.

He was quite a ham. 

The other thing I remember was Scrooge's joy on Christmas morning when he realizes that it is not too late to change his fate. That feeling of rebirth and forgiveness is one of my favorite moments in literature. I have had psychological baggage to dump, even as a 10-year-old, over the years, and stories by extraordinary authors have been a place to go to find the inspiration and the courage to act. No matter how many times I read Black Beauty, however, I have not come close to his gentle forbearance.

Emily Arnold McCully

No matter what is done to Christmas, it's still the holiday that arrives wrapped in music, and my best memories are of carols and choirs. All generations can still sing out together in sentimental celebration of antique traditions. My family did a lot of ornament-making and popcorn- and cranberry-stringing. That led to considerable frustration and pricked fingers for my sister and me, but we always looked forward to draping the strands on the tree. It was a given, so to speak, that I made greeting cards—one at a time!

My mother always gave a dramatic reading of The Night Before Christmas, and I loved to pore over Caldecott's sprightly illustrations for Washington Irving's Bracebridge Hall.

Scott Westerfeld

Christmases with my big Texas family taught me the power of storytelling. Every year my family would make the long drive to my grandparents' house, in a tiny town with unpaved roads and no street signs. Clamor and chaos ruled most of the day, but at some point an unannounced migration toward the living room would begin, a strange calm descending across four generations. Suddenly, just one person would be talking, the rest of us in rapt silence.

Most of the stories were from the ancient past. How my uncle had hunted crocodiles on a Pacific island during World War II (with a machine gun, naturally). How my grandparents' long-distance relationship (12 miles in 1928) meant they could only see each other once a week, at church. How my uncles and aunts survived childhood encounters with rattlesnakes, or falls from tractors, or rides on runaway horses.

All of these stories were well told; the techniques of pacing, repetition, and detail were passed on in tandem with the family history. But storytelling skills weren't the most important things that I learned at those Christmas gatherings. What they really taught me was the power of story, how a lone voice can silence wrestling 5-year-olds, bring a family together, even preempt college football games. (And I remind you that this was Texas.)

It's these realizations that make people want to be writers: that stories are valued, that language can be as compelling as presents.

Arthur Yorinks

Having grown up in the ’50s, holiday time to me meant special films appearing on television. It started with Thanksgiving and the annual showing of The Wizard of Oz. It scared the daylights out of me. I feared for my poodle, even though she was four times the size of Toto. And I still don’t know where they found those flying monkeys!

To lighten the mood, as days headed toward Christmas, there came along Holiday Inn and White Christmas. They seemed like the same movie, but it didn’t matter. They were both a comfort and a calm before the storm—yes, the blizzard known as Babes in Toyland, the 1934 Laurel and Hardy film based on Victor Herbert’s operetta. How I sat glued (paralyzed may be the more apt word) in front of the screen. Bogeymen coming out of a hole in the ground summoned by an evil landlord (I happened to see the original, uncensored version sometimes known as The March of the Wooden Soldiers). Oh, if not for Natalie Wood and Miracle on 34th Street, the wonderfully sentimental antidote, I’d still be quaking in my boots every December. As a matter of fact, it’s probably why I did my own theatrical audio version of A Christmas Carol this year, (available online)—to soften those early, terrorizing, but truly priceless holiday memories.